Seamplex, the latest entrant in the burgeoning market for cloud-based engineering modeling Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), is readying for release next month an offering it brands as CAEplex, a web front end for open-source engineering computational codes running on the cloud. The company describes its product as “the first platform designed from the back end outward, embedding the UNIX philosophy in its design basis to write an easy-to-use yet flexible and powerful tool for engineers.”

Seamplex explains this philosophy by referencing Wikipedia’s definition, which reads in part: “The Unix philosophy…is a set of cultural norms and philosophical approaches to minimalist, modular software development. It is based on the experience of leading developers of the Unix operating system. Early Unix developers were important in bringing the concepts of modularity and reusability into software engineering practice, spawning a ‘software tools’ movement…The Unix philosophy emphasizes building simple, short, clear, modular and extensible code that can be easily maintained and repurposed by developers other than its creators.”

In that context, Seamplex explains how it approached design of CAEplex: “The front end was designed, coded and implemented from scratch in the same spirit the back end was actually designed, coded and implemented. Simple parts connected by well-defined interfaces. Separated policies and mechanisms. Easy communication with other programs. Small straightforward cooperating pieces.”

Step 3: Mesh—Choose a mesh granularity to generate a grid for the geometry. Review the number of elements and see how the faces with boundary conditions have been discretized.

CAEplex workflow Step 3. Source: Seamplex

Step 4: Solution—Review the problem parameters to ensure the mathematical model is well defined. If anything was missed during setup, easily go back and correct or complete the task.

CAEplex workflow Step 4. Source: Seamplex

Step 5: Results—View regions and values of maximum stress and displacement. Toggle on an off the Von Mises stresses in both the original and the displaced mesh. Interactively warp the model to see the deformations with an arbitrary factor. Download the results in VTK format.

CAEplex workflow Step 5. Source: Seamplex

In addition to the above capabilities in the currently available pre-release demo version of CAEplex, the full version will also include:

A standard subscription will be priced at $60 per month. In a special launch promotional offer, the software will be available for $50 per month. Prospective purchasers will be able to obtain full access at no cost for a 14-day trial period. Contact the company for corporate enterprise-level subscriptions.